Poetry by Hia Chakraborty

Plato in the Barrio

I see black mothers weeping and black boys dying, and watch the city sleep through the rain andpick itself up come morning, and I don’t have anyone to talk to about these things, not about thefruits in the fridge soaked in lemon juice, or womanhood, or godhood, or girlhood, or if they’rereally three different things, and the ribbons of daylight slapping against white bare thighs in amoving U-Haul, and the perfume of 5 Pointz five-dollar drip coffee instead of fresh aerosolpaint, and garbage cans disappearing from street corners, and bodegas hiking upbaconeggandcheeseonabagel prices, and $1.05 Arizona cans, and apartments and their rent risinghigher than mountains or gods or even what we’re capable of, and asking twenty-year residentsto take numbers from the ticket machines and wait to enter their houses, and deadbolts overprivate parking lots, and girls pulling off their head scarves to stay alive, and Yelp complaints ofS.K. bodega cats, and cops showing us what damage they can do with their badges and their gunsand their fear, and how all the people crack open their skulls to offer what’s inside, andStarbucks grand openings on Jamaica Avenue, and South Harlem and SoHa, and how dogs don’twant to be dogs, and how homes don’t want to be homes, and how everyone always looks away,even the white boy you’re sitting next to in the passenger seat of his car parked on the BedfordAvenue corner, wondering if he’s going to love you or kiss you, but never both.

Hia Chakraborty is a queer, twenty-three-year-old writer currently living in New York City. She has been writing since early childhood, and writes and performs slam poetry across the New York City/Jersey City area under the pseudonym "Salvia Plath." “Plato in the Barrio” is one piece from her recently-completed young adult short fiction collection: A MENAGERIE FOR WRECKED THINGS. When she is not writing, she is reading banned books, drinking herbal tea, actively avoiding social obligations, and just trying her best.